


Love Like Strangers

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 2016 Reylux Tropesgiving Exchange, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Deception, F/M, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Past Relationship(s), Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:59:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: I didn’t ask him his name,
    
    This lonely boy in the rain.
    
    Fate, tell me it’s right,
    
    Is this love at first sight?
    
    Please don’t make it wrong,
    
    Just stay for the night...
    
  
Rey and Hux made their choices. It's time for Kylo to make his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasa/gifts).



> So: in a fit of ill-advised optimism, I decided to join this fic exchange because despite being a kylux writer (of somewhat dubious standing), I have a soft spot for reylux a mile wide, and I wanted to give back to this lovely little fandom. I...likely failed miserably, but here it is, for kasamon. The tropes I was specifically using were ["The Reason You Suck" Speech](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheReasonYouSuckSpeech) and [Light Is Not Good](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightIsNotGood). I also apparently have no idea what a word limit is. I suck. I realise this.
> 
> The thing is, too, that it was inspired by this damn very early nineties song that has haunted me since childhood, [_All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAfxs0IDeMs). If you don't know the gist of the song, or don't want to listen: it's about a woman who picks up a stranger for a one night stand, and leaves before he can get so much as her name. But they meet again, months later, and she has a child. As it turns out, it's his -- and she did it on purpose, because her actual partner, whom she loves, is apparently infertile. Now, this song _messed me up_ when I realised years later what I so innocently sang as a kid, and I always wondered about the After. Apparently, my brain decided to solve that mystery with Rey, Hux, and Kylo. Oh, boy.
> 
> So, yeah: apologies to the prompter, because my kylux bias is showing, and I clearly have no idea what I am doing with my life. But: a gift. For what it's worth. <3

“Is this _your_ house?”

The voice, sourced from somewhere to his left, pitches itself somewhat higher than the normal. Given that the man started with a low baritone, perhaps it shouldn’t have sounded all that peculiar. But it does. Because Hux knows the way the man’s voice truly is.

“Kylo?”

The man stands silent not three feet from him, staring, barely more than a silhouette. And Hux’s keys press very warm against cool skin, metal teeth biting deep as fingertips curl into palm. The name had been mere formality. Even with the dim lighting, Hux would have known him from much greater distance than this – never mind he had thought the distance between them to be in the measure of states, rather than mere feet.

And the distance becomes even less as Kylo steps forward, then falters. His face, barely aged by the years since their last argument, twists in ways all too familiar: rage, bewilderment, frustration, resignation.

“I didn’t know this was your house.”

The jagged edge of the key threatens to cut through skin. But from the chill of said skin, Hux wonders if his blood hasn’t already just frozen in his veins. “Then what are you doing here?”

And it wasn’t even that Kylo must have bypassed two security gates, both carded and of particularly study construction, to get this far into the apartment complex. “I…followed Rey. The other day. And then…I was waiting…I just…”

“Why would you follow Rey?” So quick he had fallen again to sharp interrogation, the ghost of arguments long since passed. “How do you even _know_ Rey?”

“I saw her.” His eyes shift sideways, somewhere to the left of his head. “At the park.” The halting speech, half-formed thoughts given early voice: both are as familiar as the distance in his eyes when he says, “with the baby.”

A crawling sensation, like some fresh-caught and virulent disease, moves beneath his skin with fraught purpose. Hux remembers now what she had said, then: dark-haired, tall. With kind of unfortunate ears. Of course he’d thought of him. But it had only been memory, vague association. Anything else would have been impossible.

“Kylo—”

“I didn’t know you were married to her.” The words come out in a terrible, destructive rush, some dam broken and unburdening. “That you were even _married_.”

Somehow he smiles, a straightbladed thing with edges that cut even himself. “Oh. So you didn’t just turn to stalking after all. I suppose that’s a relief.”

And Kylo’s eyes are fixed upon him, bright and dark and as overlarge as his hands and feet and hunched shoulders. He’d always been too easy to hurt. Hux had told himself long ago that’s why it was better they had parted. “I never looked for you. Not once.” And then he scoffs, a cynical sound at odds with the dark damp wounds that are those damned eyes. “I _couldn’t_. Not after the way you left.”

If Hux were kinder, he’d have met his gaze. But his opened hand, already bruised about the palm – bisected lines of life and love – holds the key, and he stares at it when he says, “I always thought you would have taken it as some kind of encouragement.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you even knew me at all, Hux.”

His head snaps up, eyes blazing; anger has always been so much easier than regret, or remorse. “Then why are you here, Kylo?”

“I was looking for you,” he snaps, and the frustration is back; his hands are clenching, relaxing, never quite forming full fists. “But I didn’t know it was _you_.”

And Hux turns, eyes open and yet somehow blinded, fumbling with a lock that has never felt quite so alien. “I think you should go.”

“Did you know?” And the question is more plea than demand, even when he adds, “what she _did_?”

Hux only just resists the urge to press his forehead to the smooth panelling of his front door. Never has such a terrible headache come on so fast, and so deep. “So far as anybody knows,” he says, very quiet, “the baby was conceived via IVF. And that’s _all_ anybody needs to know.”

“She didn’t think I needed to know at all.”

He closes his eyes. Once, he’d had a thousand words to say to the man in Kylo’s position. But then, in his mind, that man had never actually been _Kylo_.

“And I _didn’t_ know.” He pauses, speech again stilted and strange: how it had been, when they had first met. “Until I saw her,” he adds, then his voice breaks. “And _him_.”

It’s a mistake to look back. Hux has always known that. But he turns, now, and knows this particular mistake for a terrible one indeed. Kylo, ghastly pale now, with eyes too wide and too dark, stands before him.

And Hux turns abruptly away, unlocks the door with a violent flick of the wrist. “Come inside.”

He doesn’t need to look back to know the working of his throat. “I don’t—”

“Come. _Inside._ ” He steps over the threshold himself with none of his usual rhythm or surety of purpose. “At the very least, you need a glass of water.” And, raising his voice in a tone near-commanding, “you’ve had a nasty shock.”

A snort is his only audible reply – but he’s moving inside all the same. Hux feels him at his back like familiar shadow, somehow lost and now returned. His fingers tremble a moment over the keypad, and then he twists his lips to a scowl, deactivating the alarm in swift sharp movements. Then he’s leaning down, removing his dress shoes. A moment’s pause, and Kylo follows suit, echo of a previous era. But then, Hux doesn’t remember Kylo’s fingers ever being so thick and clumsy over the laces of his boots.

He waits until just before the moment Kylo is finished before moving into the kitchen, indicating the island bar as he crosses to the fridge. Taking a tall glass from the cabinet, he fills it almost to overflowing; condensation forms quick on the clear surface. When he passes it across, he can see fingerprints bleeding their shape for but a moment before Kylo’s hand closes hard around them. The silence holds steady, and then Kylo sighs, lets go without raising the glass. It leaves the damp shadow of his own blunt fingers, an open palm encircling and strangling.

Hux looks to where his own imprint has been obliterated, finds his lips dry. “Would you prefer a beer? Or something else?”

“You know I don’t drink alcohol.”

“I _knew_ that.” And his fingernails scrape along the marble as he resists the urge to fist his hands. “Things change, Kylo.”

“So they do.”

And he’s staring into the water glass as if it might be a divination tool, clear and silent now. With a sigh of his own Hux skirts the bar, takes a seat beside him, wonders why it feels so awkward when it is, after all, his own house.

“She told me right away,” he says, very quiet. “The next morning, I mean. When she came home. She’d texted me the night before to tell me she was out with friends, and I thought nothing of it. She races with them still.” And now his hands are folded, tailor-neat and very still, before him. “But when I came downstairs first thing, she was sitting right here at this counter. Waiting for me.”

Kylo’s finger chases a droplet as it makes a slow suicide down the side of the glass. “And what did she say?”

“That she’d picked up a man the night before. That she had slept with him, multiple times. All unprotected, though she told him she was using birth control.” He closes his eyes, the memory razor fresh, dragging blunt along the quick pulse at his throat. “She said it felt _right_. That she knew this would be it.”

Kylo stares at him now. Even in his silence, those too-large eyes beg answers to questions never spoken, those that threaten to devour him whole.

“And then she said we could go to the pharmacy. Get some emergency contraception.” Hux is so still, now, he might as well be back in the memory that moves so vividly through his mind. “So we got into the car. And I went with her. All the way. Sat there holding her hand as she and the pharmacist talked about when it happened, and where she was in her cycle. Just the right moment, the pharmacist said. It would be important to take it right away.”

Kylo still stares, but keeps blessed silence.

“They offered her a glass of water. I said no, we’d get home first. In case it gave her the nausea they had warned us about.” For the first time he allows so emotion to colour the greys of his bland story – a barking laugh, blunt and choking. “And they thought I was such a _good_ husband!”

The hand that moves to cover his own is out of time – and Hux had only been kidding himself when he’d told himself that he’d entirely forgotten the heat of him, the way those fingers curl about his hand as if it were the smallest, most fragile thing.

“And we drove. Windows down, the long way home.” His voice trips; he must stop, take a breath, realising for the first time how light-headed he has become. “The pill in its little box, on the dashboard between us. Nothing else but music, turned down low. Could barely hear it over the wind.”

There’s a low rumble, deep in his throat. “You never used to let me have the windows down,” Kylo says, sudden, half-hoarse. “You always said it ruined the aerodynamic flow of the vehicle.”

“Well, it _does_ ,” he says, halfway between pedantic and irritated. “But I needed the window open.”

His hand is very still, where it still covers his own. “You threw it out.”

“She was right. _It_ was right. The timing. In every respect.” His moves to his breast pocket, finds it empty; even so, he then instinctively moves for the lighter that has not been there in nearly two years, either. And then Hux closes his eyes, purses his lips about nothing, and lets out a long breath. “In the end, there was never a better time for her to have the baby.”

“But did you never once think about _me_?”

The anguish in Kylo’s voice is as bitter as the smoke he cannot breathe in. “I didn’t know it was you.”

And his hand rears back, slaps down hard and open upon the counter. “But even without that,” he says, voice as ragged as Hux knows his face will be too. “But what about the man she did this with?”

“She said she didn’t know him.” He’s smiling and he doesn’t mean an inch of it. His eyes are still closed, light, as if he is in some dreamworld far from this reality. “She said that he wasn’t from round here. That they would never meet again.”

“And yet, here he is.”

Hux opens his eyes then, and does not remember ever feeling such bone-deep exhaustion. “And yet, here you are.”

The water remains clear and untouched, a pool gathered around its base. Kylo reaches out one long finger, flicks out small peaks from the circle, starburst supernova. And he doesn’t look up, not even when he says in a voice entirely too small for that outsize body, “…did you never tell her about me?”

“Why would I?”

His head jerks up, and in that moment Hux braces as if waiting for a blow. It does not fall, Kylo’s shoulders tensed, hands very still. But the glass is overturned and the water has spilled out in undammed flood, and those dark eyes are wide and furious and so very very dark.

“This is the problem with you,” Kylo says, slow, very nearly conversational. “Everything has to be _perfect_. Everything has to be _right_.” Now his voice rises; the low, brutal power of it had always been a match for even Hux’s silvertongue oratory. “But everything that’s not perfect? You just cut it right the hell out of your life.” He’s on his feet, hands flattened upon the counter, face a rictus mask of utter fury. “Well, isn’t this ironic. That you did your very fucking best to excise me from everything you ever were, and now it’s _my_ dick that got your wife pregnant.” His eyes are damp, lips twisted, his sneer something terribly close to a sob. “You should have stuck to fucking men, Hux. At least then you’d have had a legitimate excuse to raise a kid that isn’t even yours.”

Hux does not rise, bone-pale and still. “Get out of my house.”

“No.” He straightens, the muscle of his arms straining and tight beneath the leather of his jacket as he folds them over a heaving chest. “I want to talk to her.”

“From the sound of it, you already have.”

And he laughs, belly deep and broken. “That’s why I came _here_ , you idiot. She wouldn’t talk to me.” He shakes his head, far too fast and too sharp to be reordering what must be thoughts scattered to the winds. “That was the deal, you know. Because she was wearing a ring when we met. She said it was a one-time thing. No last names, no exchanging phone numbers, no talk of where we came from or where we were going. Just – sex.” He trips over the word like an adolescent, but then his lip curls, eyes narrowing where they fix upon Hux’s on. “And it was good sex, by the way. _Really_ good sex.”

The urge to take the toppled glass, to break it to jagged edge and thrust it in his eye, is a hot and frantic one. “ _Kylo_ —”

He hand thrusts out, cuts even him dead. “And then I came to visit my mother last week. First time I’ve been back here since. We had a fight, of course. The way we usually do. More with my father than with her, but she didn’t make it any better.” Now his arms are tightly folded again, but it seems more to hold himself together, this time. “So I went for a walk in the park.”

And Hux has returned to staring at the glass, though his hands remain very still. “Rey always takes him walking when she’s here in the afternoons,” he observes, flat and observational, and Kylo makes an odd sound: a clicking, in his throat. And when Hux glances up, frowning, his mobile features has grown very still, his eyes distant once more. He’d always seen things beyond Hux’s own vision. In the old days, it had just left him irritated. Now, he sees the loneliness of such sight.

“I recognised her,” Kylo says, half-dreaming. “I recognised _him_.” And when he meets Hux’s eyes now, there’s a haunted edge to them that has him shivering, even with the aircon set to perfect ambience. And he smiles, and Hux remembers he still has a heart to break.

“Even before I saw her face,” he whispers, “I knew he was mine.”

“He’s not yours.” His lips are numb, his mind a locked-up CPU. “He’s _ours_.”

Every muscle of that expressive face stiffens, as if Hux had reached across what little space remains between them, and slapped him hard. But even as his skin turns deeply pale save for the splotches of burning red across his cheeks, Ren’s eyes are blackened fire. “I never would have thought you would have accepted another man’s baby,” he says, and it’s light and calm and a stab to the gut, especially when he adds with a gloating air, “A stranger’s seed, in your wife’s womb?”

It feels like simple murder may now be the most humane option open to him. “Don’t start this shit with me, Kylo.”

Starting fights had been one of their greatest talents, back in the day. Hux cannot be surprised that ease remains now. But it does surprise him, and badly, when Kylo closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and shakes his head. “Why did you let her do it?” he asks, and it’s not angry, or frustrated, or anything Hux could have understand. He opens his eyes and now there is only sadness etched into their gloom, and Hux slams to his feet, body sudden sparking livewire.

“Because it was the only way!” Moving across the floor, erratic arrhythmic step, Hux barely resists the urge to fist his smooth hair between twitching fingers. “She’s an _orphan_ , Kylo. And you know damn well I might as well be. Neither of us have any family to speak of. But we found each other. And we thought we could have more. That we could give someone else the life we never knew.” His laughter barks across the room, its echo stunted and strange. “And then found we couldn’t. We had everything we needed – wealth, stability, each other…and we couldn’t have the one thing that would make it whole.”

Kylo’s own voice is a queer, emotionless thing when he says, “You never wanted that with me.”

He digs fingertips into his eyes, starburst exploding in grim silver supernova in the darkness. “Yes, but _stability_ was never in our joint vocabulary, Kylo.”

“You think I have a family.” And when Hux stops moving, blinking blind into the evening light, Kylo is a shadow skittering away across indistinct shape. “That’s not a family, Hux. It’s a natural disaster.”

“Kylo, wait.”

He pauses, but does not turn back. “For what?” And he chuckles, humourless and light. “For your wife to come home, with your baby?” One hand rises, slashes down like the fall of an executioner’s blade. “Forget it. Forget all of it. Just – forget me. I feel like you already had, before today.”

The words emerge as barely more than a whisper. “I never forgot you.” And he’s walking, coming far too close. It’s a mistake, but apparently one they are both willing to make because Kylo does not move even when Hux stops just a moment before him. And he does not turn away from Hux’s gaze, the almost ravenous path it cuts as he maps out a body and face once so familiar. Six years should not have made such a difference. But: time becomes age. It’s not maturity that has sharpened his features, dug out new creases and lines. But it’s _something_. Even if there is still a child’s broken wonder in those wide dark eyes.

The same eyes he had given their son.

“Do you want to talk to her?” Hux asks, and he cannot even be ashamed to hear his voice break on the last word. Kylo, his anger bled and burned out, just shakes his head.

“She made it pretty clear she didn’t want to talk to me.”

“But you came here anyway.”

“I – _Hux_.” The wryness colouring his words twists around his heart, strangling his sense almost as much as does that lopsided smile. “You know me. I didn’t even _think_. I just…I needed to _see_.”

This warmth in his chest should not exist. Nor the pity. He can feel both choking him all the same when he says, “And now?”

“I don’t know.” He sits down, very heavy, as if his massive shoulders have at last bowed beneath the weight so suddenly thrust upon them. “You _broke_ me, Hux. You know that, right?”

“I never meant for this to happen.”

“No.” And his fingers skitter across the counter, spilled water not yet evaporated. “No, you just never meant to see me again.”

It’s a coward’s way, to turn his back to the hunched-up mess seated at the island bar. Hux does so anyway, eyes fixed upon a nearby shelf. “Would you like some tea?”

His snort comes dangerously close to a chuckle. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Tea, then,” he murmurs, already reaching for the kettle. And he makes their tea in silence, not even asking for Kylo’s preferences. Some things do not change: one sweet and milky, the other so deep as to be nearly black, the rich scent of bergamot curling his lip as he brings it over.

They sip in silence: Kylo’s big hands wrapped around the cup so it nearly disappears between them, Hux’s fingers grasping the little handle only when he needs to raise the teacup to his lips.

Kylo has finished, and Hux nearly so, when there comes a rumble from the attached garage. Hux wraps his hands about his cup only to hide the tremor as he waits for the inevitable sound of the internal door.

And Rey has always had the senses of a wildcat, living out in the feral cruel plains of a desert world. “Bren?” she calls, warning trill to even so short a word; Hux looks to Kylo, and almost immediately, he nods.

“We’re in here, Rey.”

And he doesn’t look away. “ _We_?” And with that dubious note to her voice, Rey comes to them both. Hux can feel her approach like wind whipping up the whitecaps of a restless sea. And then he’s standing, turning, crossing the room to intercept her just as she enters. Hux takes the small chubby child from her arms, even as she frowns, starts a question.

Then she glances across the room and for a moment it seems time itself has ground to a halt.

The weight of his son is familiar and welcome in his arms, one hand pressed to his small shoulderblades, the other pushed up beneath a securely diapered behind. “Is he ready for his nap?” Hux asks, and does not know how he can sound so normal, even as one small hand fists softly in his starched collar. “I’ll just go put him down.”

Rey’s voice is sharp staccato, the kind she uses when foolish men underestimate exactly what a slight woman with a steeltrap mind can build when given even very few tools and materials. “What is _he_ doing here?”

Her eyes are upon Kylo alone, and he meets her gaze with unwavering stillness. The hairs on the back of Hux’s neck prickle, hands tightening on the sleepy warm bundle pressed to his chest. He can feel his son’s breath against his cheek, slow and even. “It’s complicated,” he says, and nods to the door. “But first, we put him down.”

“Bren—”

“Rey.” As her brows furrow at the interruption, he takes a deep breath, and also advantage of her silence. “Come with me.” And then, to Kylo, who now watches them both with a rapt and preternatural stillness upon his features, “We’ll be back in a minute.”

The baby’s room is not far. It still feels they have summited Mount Everest when they reach the top of the stairs, step into the cool dim light of the nursery. With the curtains already pulled, it is the work of a few minutes to change outdoor clothes for a sleeping onesie, to set his son down, to cover him gentle with a knitted coverlet, to pass a hand over the warm curve of his sleeping face.

“Bren.” Her voice is scarcely above a whisper. “I never thought I’d see him again.”

“I know.” He reaches over, flicks on the small radio; soft music begins to play, low and unobtrusive. And, again, he brushes his fingertips over the baby-soft swell of one cheek. “But it’s not that simple.”

“Does he want to claim paternity or something?” Close to his side now, he can feel the heat of her pressed all along the right hand side of his body. “Because we can fight that. We _will_ fight that.”

“It’s not about paternity.” And he sighs, draws his hand back before he can dance fingertips over the dark down of his hair. “At least, I don’t think it is.”

A glance sideways, and already her lips are thinning, fingers fisted to white knuckles around the side of the crib. “I’m going to tell him to leave.”

“Rey—”

“This is my life. This is _our_ life.” And she pauses as their son makes a little snuffling noise, small legs kicking. Only when he is quiet again does she speak, eyes upon him, words urgent and fierce. “We made it here. You and I, together. And I’m not letting anybody take it away from me.”

And then, of course, she’s storming down the hallway, a force of absolute nature that will let no obstacle dare stand in her way. In retrospect, it was easy to see why she’d appealed to him, even so soon after he’d so unceremoniously left the natural disaster that had been Kylo Ren. She might mask it better, but they both are the storm, whereas he himself is the watchful eye.

Hux follows her close. Still Rey manages to reach the kitchen first, and that is where he finds her: eyes afore, arms akimbo, glaring at Kylo with her feet planted in a definite warrior’s stance.

“Ben,” she is saying, “Ben, you shouldn’t be here, yeah?”

“ _Ben_?” And the shock in Hux’s exclamation has them both turning to him, even as he stares aghast at only Kylo. “You told her your name was _Ben_?”

“Isn’t that your name?” Her mystified expression, within moments, solidifies to anger. “Did you _lie_ to me?”

And Kylo scoffs, eyes rolled to the ceiling in a manner that Hux eerily recognises from himself “That’s rich coming from _you_.”

“Stop it. Both of you.” It’s his best command voice – the one he uses to corral even the most recalcitrant of board members – and it works. Still, he’s not quite sure what he’s going to say next, though he’s already speaking it aloud. “But that does explain why she didn’t recognise you at all. Because I _did_ tell her about you.” He pauses, tongue moving over lips that are now very dry. “But I always called you Kylo.”

Rey’s eyes widen, her slim body utterly sill. “…this is _Kylo_?”

But Kylo’s not even looking at her now, staring at Hux instead with some unholy chimera of frustration and fondness upon his face. “Well, she’s calling you _Bren_ ,” he says, tongue tight about that single syllable. “I think she’s the only one actually using her real name here.”

“Brendol is my middle name, Kylo. And it’s less of a mouthful than bloody Armitage.”

“It’s also your _dad’s_ name.”

“Yes, and he hates me using it. I think you can do the mental arithmetic on that one.” Here he takes a deep breath, a count of ten; it is far too easy to fall back into old arguments, with such a man as this. He still just barely manages to temper his irritation, however, when he adds, “But I still can’t work out why the hell you’d tell her your name was _Ben_.”

“So his name’s not Ben?”

“It _is_ Ben.” At the look of disbelief marring his wife’s face, Hux must deny the almost hysterical need to burst into laughter. “But he never uses it.” And then suddenly it’s not funny at all, not when he looks to Kylo and says, “At least, he never used it with me.”

“Well, it just felt right,” he shoots back, though his defensiveness evaporates a moment later when he adds, with low viciousness, “And that’s what the whole damn thing was about, yeah? What felt _right_.”

Rey, with colour burning high in her cheeks, turns on him like an unsheathed blade. “You said it felt right, too. Don’t say you didn’t.”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to knock you up!”

Even as Kylo’s shout rocks the room, Hux glancing upward to the baby’s room, Rey only rolls her eyes, sits down hard on one of the high barstools. “You didn’t need to know,” she says, even and calm, and then he’s looming over her, eyes bright fury.

“The hell I didn’t!” His hand rises, finger pointed unerringly in the right direction. “That’s _my_ child up there!”

“No. It’s mine.” She crosses her legs and then her arms, chin tilted up, meeting his fury with the sharp tranquillity Hux had so loved in her from the beginning. “Actually, it’s mine and Bren’s.”

“And don’t _I_ get any say in this?”

“No.” And now the colour in her cheeks blossoms outwards as she meets his gaze, its source something far deeper than anger. “One night, we said. Just to pass the time. To kill some loneliness. To come in, from the rain.”

He blinks rapidly, four or five times, and then begins to move backward, as if she might burn him. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”

“For me, it was.” One hand flicks out, a queen’s dismissive wave. “You didn’t need to know.”

“About my own _child_?”

“You didn’t go into sex with me wanting a child.” And her lips are tight, eyes very bright. “But we needed one.” And she smiles, cold and clear, ice dripping from every word. “And you could give me one.”

“Oh, it’s that simple.”

She shrugs, the gesture somehow encompassing the sleek modern lines of the apartment in which they now sit. “We can give a child a good life. And then we couldn’t have one of our own. It wasn’t _fair_.” And her voice turns wheedling, persuasive, very nearly sweet when she says, “But in this, we could. It was the right thing to do. You can’t say it was wrong. Not when you see what kind of life we will give our son.”

Kylo is staring at her as if she’s some alien fallen from the sky. But Hux knows all too well the spell of her – and can see the casting of it in his eyes. “But what you did to get him?”

“I did what I had to.” She nods her head, just once. “What was necessary.”

It’s silent between them, then. And upon his self-imposed sidelines, arms crossed and eyes half-hooded, Hux has never felt quite so very tired. Kylo had rarely given him a moment’s peace; Rey has always been the fire in his belly. And to have them both here before him, now, alive and vibrant and _perfect_ —

“Rey.” He distantly congratulates himself on being so even in his tone. “Can I speak with you?”

She seems to be trying to tell him by glare alone to let her handle this herself when Kylo lets out an explosive sigh.

“I should go.”

“Kylo.” But he’s still looking at Rey. “Stay. Please.”

“Why?” His laughter echoes about the open space with brutal ricochet. “You didn’t want me then. Why would you want me now?” There’s a bite to the words, lips curled around bared teeth. “You and your _perfect_ life.”

“Are you saying my son doesn’t deserve the very best?” Rey demands, rounding on him like a bear roused to protect her only cub. And Kylo is nearly pitying when he shakes his head.

“Do you not _see_ what you’ve done?”

“I know _exactly_ what I did.” She’s grimacing, though, one hand on her hip so tight that Hux knows he’ll find bruises there, later. “And sure. Maybe it was wrong, what I did to you. But our child – he’ll grow up with parents who love him, in a home safe and secure. And that’s right. That’s _good_.”

She might as well have driven a stake through his heart. “If that’s what helps you sleep at night,” he says, breath a little short, as if she had actually kneed him in the solar plexus. And then he chuckles, one eyebrow rising in lazy arch. “Not that I saw you _sleep_ much at all, that night.”

She parries the blow, strikes back with one of her own. “You know, it’s not just the girl’s responsibility. Contraception, I mean. You should have insisted on condoms. If you’d had any sense.”

“Yeah. You caught pregnant from me, but who the hell knows what I caught from you?” And he’s close, again, standing over her even as she gazes up with utter defiance. “Was I even the first? How many _other_ men were there, Rey?”

The bitter taste of ionised air is sharp on his tongue, as electric as the atmosphere between them. They’re both breathing hard, his hands fisted at his sides and hers folded over her small chest, and Hux tries to draw a deep breath, only to choke upon it.

The sound breaks the spell; even as he fumbles for a glass of water, spluttering as it still manages to go down the wrong way, he can feel their eyes upon him, demanding and disturbed.

But when he looks up, looks back, Kylo scowls deep. “What are you staring at, Hux?”

Rey’s chuckle is bitter, bold, and somehow so very beautiful. “I think he likes it when we argue.”

Even Ren’s low voice appears to have dropped an octave when he speaks next. “Well, he always liked it when _we_ argued, I can tell you that right now.”

That sends a flash of heat through his abdomen, unexpected and aching and so very strong, even after all this time. Sex had never been a part of the problem. And he’s grimacing when he says, sharp, “God, you’re just like each other, aren’t you?”

“I – _what_?”

“I’m _nothing_ like him!”

Some part of him wants to lie on the cool tiled floor of his kitchen and just laugh until he cries. Instead, he turns to his wife, features carefully arranged to stillness. “Rey,” he says, and when she only fixes those clear hazel eyes upon him, he nods, unspeakably grateful. “I need to talk to you. Upstairs.” He turns, very sharp. “Kylo, don’t go anywhere.”

“You can’t order me around.”

Instinct has him wanting to say otherwise. Bitter experience has him shaking his head. “I’m just asking.” And then, the word hot and unpleasant upon his tongue, “Please.”

He purses his lips; an unfortunate manoeuvre, given his earlier half-arousal now recalls all too well the uses he’d once put that generous pout to. And then Kylo’s shaking back his ridiculous hair, eyes narrowed.

“If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m gone.”

“Fine.” He doesn’t need to look for her; she’s right by his side when he turns, says, “Rey?”

They move in perfect synch together, climbing the staircase again. He’s reminded, oddly, of their wedding day when they stand together at the side of the crib. It had been small, intimate; her two best friends on her side, and Hux with his best friend and his personal assistant. They hadn’t needed anyone else.

But they’d needed him. This child, sleeping content before them, unaware of the maelstrom below. And again, Hux must resist the temptation to card though the dark hair, to brush fingertips over his skin, its colour the low burnish of Rey’s own.

“He looks so much like Kylo,” and it’s something between despair and frank wonder. “I wonder how I never saw it before.”

Rey’s head is heavy upon his shoulder, her hand curled around his own; he can feel the champagne diamond of her engagement ring, tattooing its shape into his skin. “I know you never stopped loving him.”

His hand tightens back. “That has nothing to do with you and me.”

“Maybe once.” And she sighs, her free arm reaching forward to gentle over one tiny, half-curled hand. “It does now.”

“Rey.” And he turns to her, hands now upon her face. “I married _you_. For this. For our family.”

And she’s smiling, tremulous and so very tender. “But we knew something was missing,” she whispers. “We thought it was the baby.” Her eyes flicker to their son, soft, knowing and somehow uncertain. “But…”

“Rey.” It’s a warning, and yet somehow so very helpless. “You don’t have to do this.”

She’s always had to stand on tip-toe to catch his lips in a kiss. “I knew you were missing something when we met,” she murmurs against them. “And you always said it was over, but…”

“But?”

And she wings back on her heels, a light cynicism to the tilt of her eyebrow. “You still have all his letters.” Even as his eyes narrow she adds, nearly careless, “I haven’t _read_ them. But I know where they are.”

There are so many things that could be said to that. But Rey’s attention has moved again to their son, and Hux follows it. He is a beautiful child. He is a bundle of most precious potential, and Hux had sworn, that day on the coastal road, that he would be able and encouraged to do all that he wanted to with it.

“I swear I didn’t know it was him.”

His hand slides about her waist, draws her near. “I believe you.”

And she sighs, head against his chest; Hux wonders if she can hear the rabbit-quick beat of his frantic heart. “And it might not even work, at all,” she muses, so very soft. “But…I felt like it was right.” She sighs, eyes closed. “He really was the only one.”

He clears his throat, scratchy and sore, as if he is just speaking for the first time after a prolonged bout of weeping. “I always thought he would be the only one for me.” And his fingers move into her hair, disordering the three little buns she so often winds it in. “But…like you said. There was something missing.”

When she draws back, looks up to him with one corner of her mouth quirked up, her eyes are dry and bright. “Time’s up.”

They move down the stairs together, hand in hand. Hux doesn’t go to the kitchen, makes a right turn instead. In the foyer they find him, tying his laces with fumbling haste.

“Kylo.”

For a moment, he pauses. With a squeeze of her hand, Hux lets him. And then he’s rising, shoulders hunched, as if a creature of such size and striking appearance could ever make himself inconspicuous. “Look,” he begins, and then his hands are jammed deep in his pockets, eyes hidden by the fall of dark hair. “I’m not going to…try and claim the kid, or anything. You’re right. He’s got a good life here. And from the sound of it, we all know that he deserves that much.” He turns for the door, steps forward, half-blind. “I gotta go.”

“But what if we want to claim _you_?”

He turns, too quick, hand clenched as if he might raise a sword to counter her unexpected blow. “What?”

And Hux swallows hard, feels her hand warm and sure in his own. “You can stay.” And then, quicker, “If you want to.”

“ _What_?”

“I won’t say I never should have left.” And he means it, even when it hurts. “But if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have this second chance.” His usual élan has quite deserted him now; it’s a long moment because he can say with anything like poise, “And everything that comes with it.”

The suspicious hope writ large upon his features is as heart-breaking as it is encouraging. “But you’re married,” he says, and looks to Rey and her secret half-smile, “And what does she get out of it?”

“What did you both get out of it, that one night?” His hand tightens on hers as he reached forward to him. “What did we _all_ get?”

Kylo stares at the open palm. “You’re going to regret this.”

And Hux snorts, reaches forward, jerks him forward by the wrist. “I’ll regret it more if we don’t try.”

“Ben.” And when he turns to her, startled, Rey holds out her own free hand. “You found your way back here.” The finger wriggle, impatient in their wait. “Stay with us.”

He’s staring at her hand, callused and lovely and so very strong, and he closes his eyes. “And when it all goes wrong?”

“We’ll make it right.” Their fingers are slow, uncertain, and yet so easily fold together along lines unseen. “We have a child to raise,” Rey whispers, and Hux can all but feel her energy thrumming through her veins as she says, like an invocation, “ _All_ of us.”

Kylo sighs. But he doesn’t let go, even when Rey turns to lead them back into the house. It’s only a start, Hux thinks.

But then, all good stories have to start somewhere.


End file.
